“Aunt Tildy,” called out Ozème to the bent old woman moving ahead of him between the white rows of cotton, “if the Lord gets me safe out o’ this ditch, ’t ain’t to-morro’ I’ll fall in anotha with my eyes open, I bet you.”
“Keep along, Mista Ozème; don’ grumble, don’ stumble; de Lord’s a-watchin’ you. Look at yo’ Aunt Tildy; she doin’ mo’ wid her one han’ ’an you doin’ wid yo’ two, man. Keep right along, honey. Watch dat cotton how it fallin’ in yo’ Aunt Tildy’s bag.”
“I am watchin’ you, ol’ woman; you don’ fool me. You got to work that han’ o’ yo’s spryer than you doin’, or I’ll take the rawhide. You done fo’got w’at the rawhide tas’e like, I reckon”—a reminder which amused Aunt Tildy so powerfully that her big negro-laugh resounded over the whole cotton-patch, and even caused Sandy, who heard it, to turn in his bed.
The weather was still threatening on the succeeding day, and a sort of dogged determination or characteristic desire to see his undertakings carried to a satisfactory completion urged Ozème to continue his efforts to drag Aunt Tildy out of the mire into which circumstances seemed to have thrust her.
One night the rain did come, and began to beat softly on the roof of the old cabin. Sandy opened his eyes, which were no longer brilliant with the fever flame. “Granny,” he whispered, “de rain! Des listen, granny; de rain a-comin’, an’ I ain’ pick dat cotton yit. W’at time it is? Gi’ me my pants—I got to go—”
“You lay whar you is, chile alive. Dat cotton put aside clean and dry. Me an’ de Lord an’ Mista Ozème done pick dat cotton.”
Ozème drove away in the morning looking quite as spick and span as the day he left home in his blue suit and his light felt drawn a little over his eyes.
“You want to take care o’ that boy,” he instructed Aunt Tildy at parting, “an’ get ’im on his feet. An’, let me tell you, the nex’ time I start out to broad, if you see me passin’ in this yere cut-off, put on yo’ specs an’ look at me good, because it won’t be me; it’ll be my ghos’, ol’ woman.”
Indeed, Ozème, for some reason or other, felt quite shamefaced as he drove back to the plantation. When he emerged from the lane which he had entered the week before, and turned into the river road, Lamérie, standing in the store door, shouted out:
“Hé, Ozème! you had good times yonda? I bet you danced holes in the sole of them new boots.”